Last Summer(40)

“I think he resents me,” she blurts before she can stop herself. She lets out a shaky laugh. It’s not lost on her that her answer is the same connection she drew between Nathan and Stephanie.

Nathan’s brows fold. “He told you this?”

“I sense it.” Damien wouldn’t be so unkind. “It’s the way he watches me. I feel like he’s trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. He gets—” She stops midsentence and flashes him a smile when she realizes what she was about to do. What she is doing. To distract herself from saying more, she realigns the glasses in the top rack. The last thing she should be doing while on assignment is complaining about her husband. To another man, no less. One she finds very attractive.

But if she’s being honest, for the past few months she’s felt like a piece of coding Damien’s trying to insert in a software upgrade. How will she respond? Will she crash the whole system? Ruin his program?

Nathan watches her, patient.

“I’m not sad and hurt like him,” she offers up. “Hard to be when I can’t remember what I should be sad about. He thinks I got off easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he believes I blocked my memories on purpose.”

Nathan looks intrigued. “Can someone do that?”

“Subconsciously, yes. I read up on it after all this, trying to figure out what’s going on. The mind will block memories, or parts of memories, even alter memories when the person can’t deal with tragedy. My understanding is that the more I talk about it and immerse myself in familiar surroundings and with familiar people, my memories should come back. The thing is, nothing about my being pregnant is familiar—my maternity clothes, the nursery I apparently painted, my medical reports from my routine checkups and the accident, even the bills we had to pay. They didn’t feel like mine.”

“That must have been tough. I remember that about Carson. Paying the hospital bills and seeing his name printed there on the top. Knowing he’s gone and I’ll never see him again. There were all sorts of things I still had to do on his behalf. The worst was boxing up his clothes and favorite toys.” He pushes out a breath. Ella briefly touches his arm.

“I thought that would be difficult for me, too, but it wasn’t,” she says, taking the platter he rinsed and fitting it into the lower rack. “Reading those reports didn’t feel any different than researching an assignment. Same with paying the bills. It was like they were for a distant relative. I mean, I cared, but the emotional attachment I should have with Simon just isn’t there.

“Anyways.” She waves a hand, getting them back to Nathan’s original question. “Damien barely talks about the accident or my miscarriage, so that doesn’t help me either. Sometimes I think he wants to pretend it never happened.”

Nathan makes a contemplative noise, a tremor deep in his throat.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything.” He hands her a dish and she loads it into the washer.

“You made a weird noise in the back of your throat.”

He sighs and tosses the sponge into the sink, turning to her. “You’ve done what he wants to do. Forget.”

Davie had told her something similar. She should be fortunate. Why does she want to remember something that would only bring heartache? Maybe Damien’s right. Does she really want her memories back?

Yes, because she believes there’s a specific reason she’s forgotten, something she’s not supposed to remember. Damien’s complaint in the hospital keeps coming back to her.

You weren’t supposed to forget Simon.

Damien knows something. And he’s not talking. Rather, he wasn’t willing to talk until she told him about the Nathan Donovan assignment.

“Do you wish you could forget so that it doesn’t hurt so much?” she asks.

“No. But there are nights I can’t sleep, and I wish . . .” His voice trails off.

“You wish it never happened and that you can forget it ever did,” she supplies.

“Is that so terrible? To make myself believe I never had a son just so I can get through the day? Or have a decent night’s sleep? I sound like an asshole.”

“No, you don’t. You sound human. The pain never goes away, Nathan. You have to function, so you learn to live with it or you bury it. Who knows, maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I should count my blessings and be grateful I can’t remember. I’ve lost people close to me and getting over their deaths wasn’t easy. I’m not sure I ever really have, actually.”

“You’re thinking about Grace.”

“What exactly did I tell you about her?” she asks, still surprised she’d been so open with him last summer. She isn’t sure how she feels about that. Uneasy? Yes. Concerned? Definitely. Because that would mean Nathan meant something to her.

Nathan’s thumb lightly brushes the back of her hand where she grasps the edge of the counter. The gentle touch zings through her, making her all too aware of his nearness—the height of him and the breadth of his shoulders, the scent of fruit on his breath from the wine, and the faint smell of smoke from the barbecue clinging to the fibers of his shirt. She swallows roughly and forces herself to look up at him, not at her hand, where she can feel the rough, calloused skin on his fingertip. Probably from chopping wood. How cliché, she thinks. But there’s a huge pile stacked against the house. Someone had to chop it.